It Would Be Different
by WritingPurple
Summary: Zander goes to Stevie for help on asking out a girl. Stevie/Zander.


**A/N:** This fic is a joint effort between myself andmy friend Sheree (Eta Piscium), who came flailing to me at like two AM Monday morning because a fic wrote itself in her head but she doesn't consider herself a fic writer. I was drafted to write it, instead. :P So the basic plotline and a good chunk of the dialogue is hers. I just took the dialogue and turned it into am actual fic.

Title comes from the Fleetwood Mac song "You Make Loving Fun" because, well, I felt it was appropriate all things considered.

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><p>"Hey, Stevie."<p>

Stevie's just finished maneuvering her bass onto her back and her hand is on the doorknob when Zander calls out to her. It's late, band practice having run a couple hours longer than normal in preparation for their gig that weekend. Kacey, Nelson, and Kevin are gone, have been for about a half-hour, but Zander had wanted to work on the duet they were doing just a little bit more, drawing her aside with a hand on the small of her back in order to ask her quietly. Even though she had a math test to study for and a couple chapters of a book to read for English, she found she couldn't say no.

That, or she just didn't want to.

"Yeah?" She looks back over her shoulder, peering at him around the neck of her bass. He's got his hands stuffed in his pockets, looking in her direction but not at her. Past her, more like.

"I, uh, I need your help."

"With what?" She runs through his classes in her head but comes up short on anything she could possibly help him with. There's nothing due tomorrow in their history class, and he's doing better in math than she is - she was actually going to ask _him_ for help after she went over the review sheets for the test. She doesn't know a word of French, and her creative tendencies don't stretch to art. So English, maybe, or chemistry; they have the same teacher different periods. There's no test or anything coming up that she's aware of, though.

"Well, there's a girl-"

"_Bye,_ Zander." She cuts him off, rolling her eyes and turning the doorknob. Well, her guess of chemistry wasn't far off, but she's not particularly interested in helping him with _that_ kind of chemistry.

"Stevie, wait!" Before she knows it he's sprinted the length of the band room, slamming into the door and leaning against it to hold it shut.

"Zander!"

"Come on, please? I really need your help."

She fixes him with her best scowl, crossing her arms over her chest with a huff. "You've never needed my help with a girl before," she points out.

"This is… different," he says evasively. "_She's_ different."

"Look, this isn't exactly my area of expertise." Her voice is harsh; she's speaking around something hard and foreign in the back of her throat, something that's making it hard to get enough air. It's stupid and she tries to swallow it away but it won't budge. "Ask Kacey or something, okay? Isn't she usually the one you go to for this sort of thing?"

"I can't this time," he says, shaking his head; it's clear that he either doesn't notice her distress or just doesn't care. Which is fine because it's ridiculous anyway. He asks girls out all the time and it's never bothered her before, shouldn't be bothering her now.

"Why not?"

"Because this girl, she's… she's not going to fall for any of Kacey's usual tactics. Or my pick-up lines. I don't know what to do."

"So she's smart, then?" Stevie asks, and she means for the question to sound irritated and argumentative (because that's how she's feeling right now) but instead it just comes out quiet. She supposes it was inevitable, that he'd finally fall for someone who wasn't just a pretty face. There weren't many of them at Brewster High, so she had been assuming it would be later rather than sooner, but either way it was bound to happen.

The problem is, if this girl is smart she'll see what's in front of her, and Stevie's not so sure she wants that to happen.

"Really smart," he confirms, a smile flicking briefly across his face, and Stevie feels her stomach drop a little. "I really like her a lot, you know? I don't want to screw this up. And you know me better than Kacey does. Stevie, please?"

She sighs, shifts her weight from one foot to the other. He's so sincere, looks so hopeful, and she's torn between being the platonic best friend he thinks she is and being honest. With herself, with him. Normally, she can't be anything but honest, but she's finding lately it's much easier to tell the truth when there isn't quite so much at stake.

"Fine." Because Zander's her friend, because boys have always been like brothers and with a little work she'll be able to file Zander in that category with all the others. She tucks stray hair behind one ear. "Fine, I'll help you."

It was better this way anyway, wasn't it? Band members dating never ended well - look at Fleetwood Mac. Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham? John and Christine McVie? Sure, they got a hit album out of their relationship problems, but the band was a mess. Gravity 5 got itself into enough trouble without adding emotional turmoil of the romantic kind on top of it. (Though with the way Kevin had been looking at Kacey lately, they may wind up crossing that bridge eventually no matter what.)

Zander's face splits into a relieved grin. "Thanks, Stevie."

It's obvious she won't be leaving for a while yet, so she swings her bass and her school bag off of her back and puts them on the couch. "Look, Zander, I still don't get why you're so worked up about this."

"I told you I don't want to screw this up. Because she's-"

"-smart and you like her a lot, yeah, I got that part," she finishes with a sigh. "But if she's so smart why would you need to work to impress her? You should just be yourself. That's enough, you know?"

Her last few words come out barely above a whisper. There's a long silence, during which time she chews on her lip and decides to become completely engrossed in the worn, fraying Converse on her feet, because if she's looking at them she's not looking at Zander. They started out white when she got them, but years of usage had dirtied them - they were all over the tan of dried dirt. She was due for a new pair, she knew. Probably she should have bought a new pair months ago. But they were comfortable. The impression of her feet in the soles, the hole in the right heel, the spot where one of the laces was frayed through almost to the breaking point: these were all things she was familiar with. Just the thought of the stiffness of new fabric and rubber is enough to make her shy away, make her stick with what she knows.

"Really?" Zander says eventually, breaking the silence. Her eyes snap up to him and then away, to Kevin's drumset because it's the first thing she finds (and it's conceivable that she could be suddenly interested in it, right?). "That's it? 'Be yourself?' Should I be calling the cliché police on you?"

Stevie latches onto the familiar feel of his sarcasm. This is something she knows, something she can respond to without feeling the need to bolt out of the room. She grabs a pillow from off the couch and flings it at him. "Shut up, Zander."

The pillow seems to catch him by surprise because before he can react it hits him in the face and he staggers backward, laughing. "Hey!"

"'Hey' yourself," she retorts, suppressing a smile as she folds her arms across her chest. "You asked for my help. You don't get to criticize me when I give it to you."

"Sorry, sorry." He lifts his hands in a gesture of surrender. "I just… here, I've got an idea. Just pretend you're her and I'll try and ask you out, okay? You can give me pointers that way."

Stevie rocks on her heels as her stomach churns uncomfortably. She can see that this has _bad idea_ written all over it in big, bold letters and the faster she gets out of this danger zone, the better. "I don't know, it's getting pretty late, Zan; can we maybe just do this some other time? I should probably get home and-"

"It'll be real quick, I promise," he says, cutting her off and taking a few steps toward her. He's close enough now that she can see he's maybe not quite as sure of this idea as he sounds; his eyes are flicking around the room, refusing to rest on her. She doesn't understand it. It's not like this is real, after all. If he's getting nervous just asking her out as a stand-in, he's going to have a lot more trouble asking this other girl out than she thought. The thought serves to cheer her a little bit. "So, tell me what I have to do."

This isn't her forte, not even a little. She can count the number of times she's asked out a guy on her closed fist. "Well, I don't know," she says slowly. "But wouldn't the first step be to make eye contact?"

"Right. Okay." She can see it takes him a little bit of effort to quit looking around and to look at her instead. As soon as their eyes meet she wishes she hadn't suggested it. "Now what?"

"Now just… just…." It's hard to think with the way he's staring at her. She closes her eyes for a minute, gathers herself. "Just tell her what you think about her. Don't, like, bury her in your feelings, though. Keep it simple. But be honest. Tell her… tell her what you told me."

"Keep it simple, huh?" he murmurs. Her eyes are still closed, so she hears rather than sees him take a deep breath. "Hey, so, listen," he begins. There's a faint tremor to his voice, and again she's perplexed by how nervous he seems to be. "I just wanted to say that I think you're really smart. And funny. And original; I've never met a girl like you before."

There's a pause. Stevie opens her eyes, catching Zander's. He's biting his lip; it looks to her like he's thinking about something. "Is that all?" She hopes it is because she can think of a thousand things she'd rather do than listen to him sing the praises of some other girl.

He shakes his head slowly. "No." There's another pause, and when he starts speaking again the words come faster than before. "It's not something that's important to you, so maybe you don't think about it or notice it, but you're beautiful. And the way you love your friends is incredible. And… and you're talented. During practice sometimes it's all I can do to focus on my own part. I just want to watch you-"

"_Zander._" She cuts him off. Her heart has dropped out of her chest, past her feet, taken up residence somewhere in the basement of the school. It's obvious who he's talking about and she doesn't want to hear it, would rather not think about the fact that she's spent the last fifteen minutes giving him advice on how to ask out her best friend, would rather just go home and strum her bass and sing until she fell asleep and forgot this day ever happened. She berates herself silently for not figuring it out sooner. How many hundreds of times has she seen him glance in Kacey's direction during practices, during performances? It was there in front of her and she didn't understand. There was no one to blame but herself.

"Let me finish, okay?" he says, a soft smile appearing briefly on his face, and even though she's shaking her head he keeps going. "I just want to watch you play, because I feel like I really see _you_ when you're playing. Like there's this part of you that only comes out when you have your bass in your hands. It's distracting."

It hits her with near-hurricane force that he's not talking about Kacey.

Her heart must have made it back into her chest at some point; it's pounding erratically, almost painfully. She wishes she had her bass in her hands now, or something, _anything_ to serve as a buffer between the two of them because he suddenly seems so close and she's not sure she can trust herself with such a small amount of open space.

"_Oh_," is all she can think of to say. She's probably a sight, with eyes wide and a slightly slack-jawed expression, but she's too busy trying to mentally right herself to care.

"Now what?" His voice comes so quietly she almost can't hear him over the blood thundering through her ears, but it reminds her that she _is_ just playing a role here and maybe she's wrong again, maybe he knows some other bass-playing girl she's never met.

"I guess… I guess now you ask her out." Stevie slides her hands into her back pockets. "If she seems like she's interested."

There's a long moment during which he regards her silently, and she tries to hold eye contact but after a bit it's too much and her eyes flick away. "So, Stevie," he says finally, and there's something decisive in his tone, "will you go out with me?"

"S-sure." The word slips out before she can properly form it and her tongue trips a little. When she looks back at him there's a grin on his face and she feels her mouth stretch, unbidden, to mimic it. He pulls something out of his pocket, offering it to her, and she reaches with one hand to take it.

"It's a concert ticket. For next Friday. I got two of them. In case you were interested in coming."

She glances at the ticket, but it might as well be written in Greek for all that the information on it is actually sinking into her head. Not that it really matters, because she trusts Zander's music taste, and she's also aware that it could be the most awful, manufactured crap ever and right now she'd _still_ consider going if Zander was going to be there.

"I'm interested."

"Okay. It's a date." He gives her a light, playful slap on the arm, and then he's gone.

"It's a date," she echoes to an empty room. "It's a date. With Zander. A date with Zander."

Put together in that order, the words are unfamiliar. The way her mouth has to move to create them is strange. She says them again, testing it, and then a third time. It's an unfamiliar she can get used to.

_Maybe_, she thinks, _Fleetwood Mac can take a hike_.


End file.
